:Literary Awards:

The Georgia Center for the Book is the co-sponsor of the major literary
awards presented in the state of Georgia.

The Townsend Prize

The winner of the 2012 Townsend Award for fiction is
Thomas Mullen of Decatur for his novel,
“The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers.” The novel is the second written
by Mullen, though he has since published a third. Mullen, 37, received the
award, — $2,000 and a silver commemorative tray — at
ceremonies at the Atlanta Botanical Garden on April 26.

The Townsend Prize for fiction is awarded every other year to the Georgia
writer judged to have produced the best work of fiction or short stories
in the previous two years. It was created in 1981 in honor of the founding
editor of Atlanta magazine, Jim Townsend.

The award was administered by Georgia State University from 1981-1997 and
by Georgia Perimeter College with the Chattahoochee Review from 1997-2008.
The award is co-sponsored by the Georgia Center for the Book and the
Southern Academy for Literary Awards at Georgia Perimeter College.

The final nominated books for the 2012 Townsend Award include:

Perfect Peace
Daniel Black

Reign of Madness
Lynn Cullen

Ghost on Black Mountain
Ann Hite

Backseat Saints
Joshilyn Jackson

Remain in Light
Collin Kelley

The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers
Thomas Mullen

A Marriage of Convenience
Andrew Plattner

My Bright Midnight
Josh Russell

A Curable Romantic
Joseph Skibell

The Stranger You Seek
Amanda Kyle Williams

Previous winners of the Townsend Prize are:

The Help (2010)
Kathryn Stockett

A Cabinet of Wonders (2008)
Renee Dodd

Sabbath Creek (2006)
Judson Mitcham

The Valley of Light (2004)
Terry Kay

The Bridegroom: Stories (2002)
Ha Jin

Daughter of My People (2000)
James Kilgo

The Sweet Everlasting (1998)
Judson Mitcham

Some Personal Papers (1996)
JoAllen Bradham

The Laughing Place (1994)
Pam Durban

When All the World Was Young (1991)
Ferrol Sams

The Lives of the Dead (1990)
Charlie Smith

Alice (1989)
Sara Flanigan

And Venus is Blue (1986)
Mary Hood

The Heart of a Distant Forest (1986)
Philip Lee Williams

The Color Purple (1984)
Alice Walker

Children, My Children (1982)
Celestine Sibley

The Lindberg Award

The Stanley W. Lindberg Award was presented biennially from 1999-2007 and
co-sponsored by the Center for the Book. It was named for Stanley W.
Lindberg, editor of The Georgia Review 1977-2000 and honored a
Georgia man or woman who made important contributions to the state’s
literary culture through a lifetime of work and accomplishment.

The Lindberg Award winners are:

2007: Terry Kay, Hart County native, Georgia Writers
Hall of Fame inductee and author of more than a dozen acclaimed works
of fiction

2005: Tina McElroy Ansa, Macon native, writing
teacher and author of novels including Baby of the Family and
Ugly Ways

2003: Bettie Sellers, spent most of her life near
Young Harris, former Poet Laureate of Georgia, author of more than a
half dozen volumes of poetry and essays

2001: Marion Montgomery, acclaimed writer and critic
and long-time faculty member at the University of Georgia

1999: Pat Conroy, native of Atlanta, author of
bestselling novels including South of Broad, Beach
Music and The Prince of Tides

The Lillian Smith Award

The Lillian Smith Award was established by the Atlanta-based Southern
Regional Council shortly after the death of the Georgia author in 1966.
The award is presented annually to authors whose books are outstanding
creative achievements which demonstrate through literary merit and moral
vision an honest representation of the South, its people, its problems,
and its promises.

In 2004, the Southern Regional council entered into a partnership with
the University of Georgia Libraries, which now administers the awards. In
2007, the Georgia Center for the Book joined the partnership as a
co-sponsor to help the awards reach a wider audience.

The winners of the 2012 Lillian Smith Award are Writing the South
Through Self: Explorations in Southern Autobiography by John C.
Inscoe published by the University of Georgia Press, and Courage to
Dissent: Atlanta and the Long History of the Civil Rights
Movement by Tomiko Brown-Nagin published by Oxford University
Press.

Writing the South Through Self examines Southern history through
the autobiographies and memoirs of those who lived it. Maya Angelou,
Thomas Wolfe, Jimmy Carter, Willie Morris and Lillian Smith are among
those discussed whose lives offer challenging, sometimes startling
insights into some of the most complex themes of Southern life: conflicts
of race, ethnics and class. Inscoe is Albert B. Saye Professor of History
and University Professor at the University of Georgia and the
author/editor of several notable books. He is secretary-treasurer of the
Southern Historical Association.

Courage to Dissent is a sweeping history of the Civil Rights
Movement in the largest and most economically important city in the South.
Extending from the 1940s into the 1980s, the book shows the movement
brought forth a number of activists with diverse, sophisticated approaches
not just to ending segregation but also in support of other goals. The
author makes clear there was no single face of the movement nor a sole
agenda, and she tellingly charts the clashes that erupted between those
within the movement. Brown-Nagin is the Justice Thurgood Marshall
Distinguished Professor of Law and Professor of History at the University
of Virginia.

The winners were honored at the 2012 AJC Decatur Book Festival.

Previous Lillian Smith Book Award Winners:

2011: At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and
Resistance — A New History of the Civil Rights Movement from
Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power by Danielle L. McGuire.
Sacrifice Zones: The Front Lines of Toxic Chemical Exposure in
the United States by Steve Lerner

2010: The Price of Defiance: James Meredith and the Integration
of Ole Miss by Charles W. Eagles. Lynching and Spectacle:
Witnessing Racial Violence in America, 1890-1940 by Amy Louise
Wood.

2009: Ariela J. Gross, What Blood Won’t Tell: A History of
Race on Trial in America; Bob Zellner with Constance Curry,
The Wrong Side of Murder Creek.

2008: Joseph Crespino, In Search of Another Country; Wesley
C. Hogan, Many Minds, One Heart.